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Gum Paste

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 10 ingredients
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Why it works: Lemon and saffron match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 538 recipes. Both carry eucalyptol, which smells eucalyptus, herbal. The science ↓

Gum Paste

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Soak gum dragon in warm water, covering it by 1 inch, for 24 hours.

  2. Prepare a tammy over a dish and squeeze the gum through it.

  3. Open the tammy, spread the gum, and squeeze again; repeat until fully processed.

  4. Knead the gum on a slab, adding lemon juice and sugar gradually.

  5. Incorporate some starch powder before adding all the sugar.

  6. Blend until the paste holds shape, then wrap in cloth and store in a damp place for a week.

  7. Work with powder to shape as desired.

  8. To harden, place in a cool area; to color, use specified natural dyes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Lemon + saffrontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together538 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  2. Lemon + sugartop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  3. Sugar + saffrontop 30% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together650 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Lemon and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Swap the saffron

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lemon, sugar):

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Marjoramfits about as well
  4. Saffronthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lemon, sugar. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

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